Sand Castles

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  "My guess, and it's a no-brainer, is that the guy's after money," Zack said bluntly.

  Her head came up. "You mean, like from a loan?"

  Zack hadn't spelled that out, but it was obvious that Wendy had had her suspicions.

  He said cautiously, "It wouldn't surprise me to hear that your caller knows his way around a track, say."

  "Who told you that Jim's a gambler?"

  Again Zack shrugged. "People who play the lotteries have been known to play the ponies."

  "He has," she acknowledged, deflated. "He used to. He doesn't anymore."

  Yeah, right. And it never snows in January.

  "Well, then, maybe I'm wrong; maybe the caller is just someone soliciting contributions for war-torn Afghanistan," Zack said dryly.

  "You don't have to be snotty," she shot back. "Jim knows he has a problem."

  Dumb. Zack had managed to put her in the position of defending the son of a bitch. He had no trouble sounding sorry as he said, "I didn't mean to presume. But you wanted my input."

  "I'm overreacting, I know," she admitted, going back to retrieve her coffee. "It's not exactly against the law to watch porn, is it? We'd all be in jail if it were," she added with an interestingly wry smile. "I'm just on edge after yesterday, I guess."

  "How did Jim take the appearance of your unexpected guest, by the way?" he added, taking advantage of the opening she was handing him.

  "He was more philosophical about the whole thing than I was. He assumes that the woman is delusional. 'A wacko,' he's convinced. He felt sorry for her, if anything."

  "He did, did he?"

  Again her head came up. "Why do you sound so surprised? Jim can be very sensitive."

  Zack couldn't keep the sneer out of his voice as he said, "Yes; I suppose that's how he was able to spot a wacko so easily in the first place."

  She winced at the jab. "All right, granted, 'wacko' wasn't his best choice of a word. But he was anxious to reassure me."

  "And he succeeded."

  Zack meant to flush an answer out of her, and he got it: in the uncertainty that he saw in her hazel eyes.

  Visibly embarrassed to be caught out, she looked away, saw the phone, and got thrown back to the other gatecrasher, the one who'd invaded the sanctity of her kitchen.

  Scowling, she said, "Monday I am calling the phone company about these calls. They have to be able to do something."

  "You mean, if Jim doesn't recognize the caller's voice before then," Zack reminded her.

  "Of course," she said quickly.

  She wasn't nearly as confident about Jim as she was trying to seem. How could she be, when she was being rocked with uncertainties from all sides at once?

  Zack himself was walking a fine line between relief that she hadn't yet found out who he was, and a burning desire to tell her and get it the hell over with. He knew that he was living on borrowed time; but he wanted to savor being in her confidence for just a few minutes more.

  ****

  Minutes turned into hours.

  A steady drizzle kept Zack working inside, methodically removing a thick wall of horsehair-filled plaster that clung stubbornly to a framework of rough-hewn lath. It was messy, mindless, throat-clogging work, the kind of job you handed off to the less experienced men in the crew. But Wendy had arranged to reschedule her meeting with Pete for later that morning, and Zack was grateful for every minute that he was able to spend working near her: he was all too aware that it might be his last.

  She did seem more at ease as the morning wore on. It was almost as if she had decided to take refuge from uncertainty in the slowly shaping dream of her house. She swept up after Zack and she chided him for not wearing a dust mask, then ran out (without telling him why) and came back with half a dozen masks after she learned that he didn't have any in his possession.

  He put one over his nose and mouth as a courtesy to her, then pulled it off at the first opportunity and shoved it on top of his head: he couldn't stand the things, and besides, she seemed reluctant to talk to him when his answers came out muffled.

  Zack couldn't abide her silence; he was too hungry for the sound of her voice. When she smiled, when she joked, when she spoke to him in such a normal way about such a normal hang-up as how to squeeze more room out of a renovation—she seemed endearingly genuine. That had to be the real Wendy, not the one who had stood in the kitchen earlier exhausted and filled with doubts.

  Ah, hell.

  He broke the last strip of lath over his knee and jammed it into the overflowing trash barrel that sat next to the wall he had taken down, then walked to the top of the stairs and stood there, afraid—knowing—that Wendy was bound to discover his role in the sorry saga. He wanted her to find that out from him and no one else.

  He stared down the scratched and beat-up treads, thirteen easy steps to full disclosure, but he couldn't make himself take the first one. The stakes were too high. He saw it so clearly now: he had a profound dread of alienating her.

  That was news to him, and it hit him hard. He'd been aware all along that Wendy was very possibly going to get hurt. Before he met her, he had hoped that the lottery money would be compensation enough for the pain. Now that he knew her, he realized how willfully cynical he'd been.

  It was clear, so far, that he'd dodged a bullet. He found that he still had options—too many of them. He could walk away, he could stay, he could exercise a number of combinations. He was sick to realize that not a single choice was acceptable to him.

  Wendy appeared at the foot of the stairs just then, material confirmation of his worst fear: that he was becoming emotionally involved.

  "Oops," she said, looking up at him. "Are you coming down?"

  He shook his head. "Just ... trying to remember what I'm doing here, that's all."

  Her smile seemed poignant as she said, "I know the feeling."

  She came up the stairs, and he was able to watch the poetry of her motion. Even now, she had a bounce. She couldn't not bounce, just as Zina couldn't not float. Wendy was as earthy as Zina was ethereal, and for the life of him, Zack couldn't understand why he was more concerned about hurting the robust woman before him than the fragile one back home.

  Unless it was that he had become emotionally involved.

  She squeezed past him with an apologetic smile and took a peek around the corner. "Oh, wow; the wall's down. What a difference!"

  She paused to look around, then headed into her bedroom; instinctively, Zack returned to empty the last full barrel, just to be near her. Caught in a trance of indecision and longing, he watched as she began pulling off the drop-cloths that covered the bed, the chest, the dresser under the window.

  Why was she doing it? Was it possible that she was planning to move out of the beach house and come back, after all? His heart soared at the possibility, then dove when she saw him watching her and cheerfully explained, "These are all filthy with demolition dust. I bought new ones to replace them."

  "Good thinking," he said, disappointed.

  She folded the covers carefully onto themselves and came out, carrying the lot, and stopped again where her wall used to be. "It's amazing. Look at the light pouring in, even on a gray day like this. I can hardly wait to see it all finished."

  "The beach house doesn't cut it for you, then?" he ventured.

  "Oh, it's wonderful, but—too many people are there at the moment," she said with a quick little scrunch of her features. "I'm in hiding, at least until Pete comes. I'll go back in time to make lunch for everyone."

  She was so close. A pea-sized lump of plaster was caught in the strands of her chestnut hair; Zack wanted to lift it away but didn't dare. Odd, how she was able to trust him with confidences that she was keeping from her family—but he didn't feel at liberty to brush a dumb little speck from her hair.

  Bewildered by the rush of emotions he was feeling, he lifted the full barrel to haul it outside. It was heavier than he thought; he braced it with his thigh and let out an instinctive mph.
/>   "Let me get the door for you," she said, setting the drop-cloths on the floor.

  She hurried down the stairs ahead of him and held the screen door open as Zack muscled the barrel through the narrow doorway. In the process, he brushed against her breasts with his bare arm and felt her instinctively back away from the contact; he was more disheartened than bemused by her response, and like everything else that involved her that morning, the realization shook him.

  He emptied the barrel into the Dumpster alongside the house, scaring up a cloud of dust as he pondered his next move. Wendy had wanted to talk, and he was the one that she'd seized on to listen. He could see why: he wasn't family. But he was family, that was the hell of it, and the sooner she found that out, the less she might end up despising him.

  Now, he decided. It was way beyond the time.

  He left the barrel outside and climbed the front steps to the sound of a ringing phone. It was Pete; he was cancelling out altogether, Wendy said after she hung up.

  "No more excuses; it's back to the beach house for me, I guess," she said, picking up her shoulder bag with obvious reluctance. She gave him a sad smile that he wanted to believe was filled with regret at the thought of leaving him, not of joining them.

  Now. Tell her now.

  She lingered at the door as if held there by the brute force of his desire to keep her. "Hopefully," she said, "they've all had the chance to talk out yesterday's fiasco, but I'm not betting on it; it was such a juicy event. Well ... you'll lock up, I guess?" she asked with an oddly wistful look. She reminded Zack of a kid after the recess bell's been rung.

  She had her hand on the doorknob.

  "Wendy, wait—don't go."

  "Why?" she asked, responding to the urgency in his voice.

  "There's something you should know."

  "About?"

  "Me."

  "Okay," she said with a puzzled look. She dropped her bag on the floor at her feet and plopped down on the nearest chair. "Shoot."

  Chapter 18

  There she sat, with her hands clasped between her tanned knees, waiting patiently and trustingly for Zack to stab her through the heart.

  He said, "Do you know Zina's maiden name?"

  She looked surprised by the question. She shook her head. "Why would I?"

  "It's Tompkins," he said. "Do you know my last name?"

  "Actually, I don't," she admitted, embarrassed. "I've been wanting to ask."

  "It's—"

  "Oh, no," she said with a sudden little inhale. "Oh, please don't tell me it's Tompkins."

  Now it was his turn to feel the heat. " 'Fraid so."

  "You're her—what would that make you? Not her husband," she said, totally at a loss. "Her—what's left? You must be her husband."

  "I'm her brother."

  "Her brother. You're her brother," Wendy repeated, as if she were trying to knock some sense into herself. "But ... you don't look anything like her," she argued, going off on a tack that surprised him. "She's thin ... pale... blond. She could be Norwegian. Whereas you—you're big; dark-haired. Dark skinned. You barely look from the same race, much less the same family. You can't be her brother."

  Obviously she wasn't aware of their mother's history. "Be that as it may," he said quietly, "I am."

  "Then why are you here?" she asked in a daze. "I don't understand."

  "Wendy ... you do."

  She shook her head almost angrily. "I do not. A woman—you say she's your sister—shows up at my party and is shocked when Jim doesn't know who she is. You show up at the house and begin sawing and hammering—and obviously Jim doesn't know who you are, either. Why is that?"

  "Coincidence?"

  She may have been dazed, but she wasn't amused. He watched her stiffen visibly at his halfhearted quip.

  "I asked you a simple question," she said.

  There was an element in her voice that he hadn't heard before; it called up an image of men in hardhats welding steel girders. Zack dropped any pretense of playing it light and said flatly, "He knows us. He's lying."

  "The hell he is!" she cried, jumping up.

  "He's lying, Wendy," Zack repeated.

  Her face was flushed; her chest was rising and falling in a stricken rhythm that made Zack want to turn away. The compulsion to tell her everything was overpowering; but even he didn't know what the exact reason behind it was.

  She said in a voice cold with suspicion, "And the name Hayward?"

  "Is Jim's real name. I don't know where he picked up the Hodene. Stole it, I assume."

  "So you're saying he's—"

  "A bigamist. I'm sure my sister must have mentioned," Zack said miserably.

  "You don't know?”

  "She's not speaking to me."

  "And why is that? Why is that, you—! Damn you!"

  Outraged and appalled, she lunged at him; Zack was so rigid with tension that he scarcely budged. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her arms down and away from him with something like horror; her shove was so unlike the fantasy he'd created of their first contact.

  "Listen to me, listen," he said, holding her fast. "The genie's out of the bottle now. Zina knows about Jim; your family knows about Zina. It's just a matter of time before everyone sorts it all out and arrives at the truth. Do you want to be the last to know?"

  She whipped her wrists out of his grip so hard that she managed to free herself; Zack was amazed by her strength.

  "There's nothing to know! Nothing!" she cried.

  She rubbed her reddened wrist and Zack took note of it. I've hurt her every way I can, now. He despised himself, and yet he plowed on. He said wearily, "When you lay awake last night, you never asked yourself, 'What if?'"

  "Not once."

  "I don't believe it. I saw you this morning: you didn't know who was telling the truth."

  "But now I do—and it's neither you nor your con-artist sister. If she is your sister! She's your wife, isn't she? Or your lover. Isn't she. It's obvious! It explains why there's no resemblance. You're one of those teams people read about. You go around the country, scamming innocent families—breaking their hearts, destroying their lives. And for what? What are you after? It's money, isn't it? Dirty, filthy money!"

  "What else?" he said in a bitter retort. "My sister doesn't have any."

  "Lots of people don't have any! They still don't go around trying to pick it out of other people's pockets. You're both crooks. You're liars and crooks!" she said, backing away from him.

  "See, now that's more what you should be saying about Jim," said Zack, dangerously calm now. "And, okay, about me. But not about my sister. She's as innocent as rain. She loved Jim madly and, I'm willing to bet, still does. Even after yesterday. Even though he abandoned her when she was young and vulnerable and pregnant—"

  "Pregnant?" Wendy's look turned totally blank. She dropped back down in the chair. "How ... do you mean, pregnant?"

  "I mean, as with child," Zack said dryly. "But the baby didn't live, and it's not hard to see why. Zina was a basket case of grief and worry. I guess she didn't say," he added sardonically. "It's hard to go into all the boring details while you're being run off the beach on a rail."

  "She fled; no one chased her," Wendy said dully. She leaned her forehead on the upturned palms of her hands and sighed, deep in her own reflections, the picture of abject misery.

  I've done this, Zack thought. This is what I've done. He was incapable of getting any more analytical than that.

  "You're lying," she said at last, sounding almost sullen about it. "I know you are. You two don't look anything alike. I don't believe you. I believe Jim."

  Still.

  "Have you considered that my mother might have fooled around?" Zack threw out recklessly. Certainly that was his theory about the difference.

  Wendy lifted her head from her hands and stared at him with revulsion. "You're disgusting, you know that? Is nothing off limits to you?" She bowed her head again.

  You. You're off limits. So much more no
w than when you thought you were married.

  The brutal realization roared through Zack like a freight train, leaving a vast hole where his heart used to be.

  "I didn't want this, Wendy," he said in a low, broken voice. "You can't possibly know how much I didn't want this."

  She looked up; she seemed surprised to see that he was still there.

  "What's his favorite color?" she suddenly asked.

  "His—I don't know. How would I know?" Zack said, offended that she was trying to test him.

  "How does he take his pizza?"

  "Oh, for—. With pepperoni and mushrooms!"

  She made a dismissive sound. "Everyone takes it like that," she snapped. "It doesn't prove a thing. He has a scar. Where is it?"

  "I don't know," Zack said peevishly. "You tell me."

  "On the inside of his thigh."

  "I'm not familiar with the inside of his thigh!"

  "You don't know him from Adam!"

  Zack threw up his hands. "Why would I lie? What could I possibly gain?"

  "I've told you: dirty, filthy money."

  "For her."

  "You say.”

  "For her, damn it! My sister's entitled to a hell of a lot more than I asked for."

  Up she jumped again. "I knew it!" she cried, waving a triumphant finger at him. "You're nothing but an ordinary blackmailer!"

  "Oh, lady—there's nothing ordinary about this," Zack said, scowling now. He turned the tables on her. "Suppose I ask myself some questions. What's his favorite movie? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. What's his favorite rock group? The Rolling Stones. What's his favorite Stones song? 'Satisfaction.' Where was he born? Piedmont, Massachusetts. What's his biggest phobia? Being locked in a room without lights. What's his favorite cut of beef? Filet mignon."

  "You knew about the steak from the party yesterday!" she said, seizing on the slimmest of straws and hanging by it. "Liar!"

  It was her blind resolve to believe the real liar that made Zack slap his hand on his wallet pocket and say, "Yeah? Well, this wasn't taken at the party yesterday."

  He fished out his ace in the hole: a dog-eared photo of Jim with his arm around Zina, taken at Plimouth Plantation in Massachusetts. The edge of a Pilgrim could just be seen in the lower left.